Awards

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Now a major motion picture from Columbia Pictures starring Matt Damon, produced by Mike Nichols, and directed by Billy Bob Thornton.

The national bestseller and the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

Review:

"Massively promoted and publicized as his breakthrough book, Cormac McCarthy's sixth novel is more reader-friendly than any of the previous five, being sequentially plotted and possessing somewhat sympathetic characters, but, remarkably, without any diminution of McCarthy's flinty integrity nor any noticeable softening of his harsh world view. Starting with a MacArthur 'genius' grant a few years back, McCarthy's rank in the literary stockmarket has been steadily ascendant. This story of the adventures in Texas and Mexico, set in 1949, by 16-year-old John Grady Cole, a genuinely memorable protagonist, is wonderfully written and realized. The Cormac McCarthy cult, including a significant number of English professors, will be surprised, though not disappointed by the new accessibility. And All the Pretty Horses should earn him a lot of new readers. A good place to discover McCarthy if you haven't already." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

Review:

"Rambunctious, high-spirited...All the Pretty Horses is a true American original" Newsweek

About the Author

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933 and spent most of his childhood near Knoxville, Tennessee. He served in the U.S. Air Force and later studied at the University of Tennessee. In 1976 he moved to El Paso, Texas, where he lives today. McCarthy's fiction parallels his movement from the Southeast to the West — the first four novels being set in Tennessee, the last three in the Southwest and Mexico. The Orchard Keeper (1965) won the Faulkner Award for a first novel; it was followed by Outer Dark (1968), Child of God (1973), Suttree (1979), Blood Meridian (1985), and All the Pretty Horses, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award for fiction in 1992.

What Our Readers Are Saying

Average customer rating based on 7 comments:

Heather Fineisen, October 20, 2014 (view all comments by Heather Fineisen)
Cormac McCarthy masterfully drawls out a scenic and sensitive tale of two young cowboys. This makes me want to buy a cowboy hat and learn how to say a lot with few words. An artful read regardless of preferred genre.

Isaac Lewis, January 1, 2013 (view all comments by Isaac Lewis)
McCarthy is a master of the mythic cowboy -- the blood-red sunsets, the wolves, the weird rides through the dark, the rain, the gloom. The leaning and spitting. The rolling of cigarettes. The one-word sentence. He will steal your heart, pause a moment, and ride into the night; leaving you cold, breathless -- in awe.

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Whitney Peterson, January 19, 2012 (view all comments by Whitney Peterson)
McCarthy is one of the most brilliant writers of our time. His lush, lyrical language draws me, willing or not, further and further into his dark and dangerous vision of the world. John Grady Cole is a deep and fascinating character. He humbly underrates himself, without being the least whiny, which makes him a vast improvement over so many of the recent crop of flawed protagonists.

My AP students are reading this now, and a whole new generation of McCarthy lovers is being born.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)

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